Explaining rapid transitions in the practice of flood risk management

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_13AFE493D043
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Explaining rapid transitions in the practice of flood risk management
Journal
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Author(s)
Lane S.N., November V., Landstroem C., Whatmore S.
ISSN
0004-5608
ISSN-L
1467-8306
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2013
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
103
Pages
330-342
Language
english
Notes
ISI:000315383200010
Abstract
This article draws on empirical material to reflect on what drives rapid
change in flood risk management practice, reflecting wider interest in
the way that scientific practices make risk landscapes and a specific
focus on extreme events as drivers of rapid change. Such events are
commonly referred to as a form of creative destruction, ones that reveal
both the composition of socioenvironmental assemblages and provide a
creative opportunity to remake those assemblages in alternate ways,
therefore rapidly changing policy and practice. Drawing on wider
thinking in complexity theory, we argue that what happens between events
might be as, if not more, important than the events themselves. We use
two empirical examples concerned with flood risk management practice: a
rapid shift in the dominant technologies used to map flood risk in the
United Kingdom and an experimental approach to public participation
tested in two different locations, with dramatically different
consequences. Both show that the state of the socioenvironmental
assemblage in which the events take place matters as much as the
magnitude of the events themselves. The periods between rapid changes
are not simply periods of discursive consolidation but involve the
ongoing mutation of such assemblages, which could either sensitize or
desensitize them to rapid change. Understanding these intervening
periods matters as much as the events themselves. If events matter, it
is because of the ways in which they might bring into sharp focus the
coding or framing of a socioenvironmental assemblage in policy or
scientific practice irrespective of whether or not those events evolve
the assemblage in subtle or more radical ways.
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Create date
30/01/2014 15:53
Last modification date
20/08/2019 12:42
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